Rapper Ice-T defends gun rights: “The last form of defense against tyranny”

posted at 5:21 pm on July 23, 2012 by Erika Johnsen

Huh. Quite a cogent argument from Ice-T, the self-described “godfather of gangsta rap,” defending Americans’ gun rights following the shooting in Colorado on Friday.

“It’s legal in the United States,” the rapper said. “The right to bear arms is because that’s the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It’s to protect yourself from the police.”

“And do you see any link between that and this sort of instance?” Guru-Murthy challenged.

“No. Not really,” Ice-T responded. “If somebody wants to kill people, they don’t need a gun to do it.”

“Makes it easier though, doesn’t it?” the host pushed back.

“Not really. You can strap explosives on your body. They do that all the time.”

Well, shoot — he just succinctly summed up what I believe to be two of the most powerful and well-reasoned arguments in support of the Second Amendment. Firstly, yes, if a person wants to go on a murderous rampage, guns can make that endeavor more expedient — but it’s a two-way street. Guns also make defense more expedient. People use guns defensively more frequently than they do to commit crimes, and oftentimes nonviolently so — just letting an intruder or attacker see that you have a gun can be enough.

Secondly, if you ever try to tell me that the United States government could never be capable of nefarious acts of deceit or violence, just because ‘this is America’ and we’re in ‘modern times’ and ‘that could never happen’ or whatever lame reasoning you can think up for not possessing the means to fight tyranny — I will literally laugh in your face. Those are the notions of a spoiled, passive ignoramus who can’t be roused to the reality that liberty requires constant vigilance. Do we really not have enough examples of modern governments suppressing, abusing, and murdering their own unarmed citizens to debunk such a stupidly trusting, falsely comforting perception? A government should always, always, always fear its people — and for that matter, other countries should to some degree fear abusing other peoples, too. I know this quote is unsubstantiated, but I still love it:

“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.“

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Secondly, if you ever try to tell me that the United States government could never be capable of nefarious acts of deceit or violence, just because ‘this is America’ and we’re in ‘modern times’ and ‘that could never happen’ or whatever lame reasoning you can think up for not possessing the means to fight tyranny — I will literally laugh in your face. Those are the notions of a spoiled, passive ignoramus who can’t be roused to the reality that liberty requires constant vigilance.

The 2nd Amendment is not just as check against federal tyranny, but also civil disorder, and organized injustice of whatever unforeseeable sorts. Plus, it about freedom, and personal protection against assault and robbery.

Secondly, if you ever try to tell me that the United States government could never be capable of nefarious acts of deceit or violence, just because ‘this is America’ and we’re in ‘modern times’ and ‘that could never happen’ or whatever lame reasoning you can think up for not possessing the means to fight tyranny — I will literally laugh in your face. Those are the notions of a spoiled, passive ignoramus who can’t be roused to the reality that liberty requires constant vigilance. Do we really not have enough examples of modern governments suppressing, abusing, and murdering their own unarmed citizens to debunk such a stupidly trusting, falsely comforting perception? A government should always, always, always fear it’s people…

Thank you for that. It can’t be repeated often enough. People let their freedoms slowly vanish while they sit watching TV and chowing down on corn chips.

just because ‘this is America’ and we’re in ‘modern times’ and ‘that could never happen’ or whatever lame reasoning you can think up for not possessing the means to fight tyranny — I will literally laugh in your face.

Right on. Things can change fast. There are already a bunch of outlandish things taking place that would have been unimaginable a just a few years ago.

Ice T has it right. I wonder if he’s familiar with the long history of states trying to deny guns from blacks. After the Civil War, having a gun in your home could be the only thing keeping you from being lynched. For free blacks, guns were the great equalizer.

Today, a lot of women feel the same way – guns can keep you safe in a way that police just can’t.

He’s still a lib… “Not to Hunt” and “You’ll never have justice on stolen land” bothered me, but other than that, he said it quite well.

Corporal Tunnel on July 23, 2012 at 5:31 PM

Basically, he’s still giving a Left point of view on the 2nd Amendment.

It’s not really that he took a particularly bold step towards Conservatism, he’s just agreeing to a point that *all* Americans that believe in the Constitution believes in. Hence the “Stolen Lands, etc” snark.

OTOH, he has mellowed out a lot more as he’s been more mainstream. So maybe this is a step toward the Reagan side?….Nahhhhh….

Secondly, if you ever try to tell me that the United States government could never be capable of nefarious acts of deceit or violence, just because ‘this is America’ and we’re in ‘modern times’ and ‘that could never happen’ or whatever lame reasoning you can think up for not possessing the means to fight tyranny — I will literally laugh in your face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sKQl-Qp5W0&feature=player_detailpage
“Police said two vehicles ended up in the church parking lot after some sort of argument between the drivers. Police said one vehicle was chasing the other. The man who was being chased got out of his vehicle and entered the church and told people to take cover. A woman came out of the church to see what was happening in the parking lot and got shot.

Police said an off-duty officer was at a service and went outside and shot the man who shot the woman”

Secondly, if you ever try to tell me that the United States government could never be capable of nefarious acts of deceit or violence, just because ‘this is America’ and we’re in ‘modern times’ and ‘that could never happen’ or whatever lame reasoning you can think up for not possessing the means to fight tyranny — I will literally laugh in your face

I didn’t read the byline before I read the article. When I read the above I knew it must be Erika doing the writing.

Google Randy Weaver and then WACO if you think your goberment won’t kill American citizens and the video drone killer, card shark Barrack Hussein Obama took it to another level when he killed an American citizen with a million dollar drone fired missile.

No trials, no convictions, no Miranda rights, to any of the above.

the same BATF/FBI that walked guns to Mexico in a failed second amendment attack Killed innocents at WACO and Ruby Ridge!

He’s still a lib… “Not to Hunt” and “You’ll never have justice on stolen land” bothered me, but other than that, he said it quite well.

Corporal Tunnel on July 23, 2012 at 5:31 PM

He is 100 percent right about the “Not to hunt” but the stolen land thing is just plain ignorant. All land is by someones definition “Stolen Land”. No nation ever came into existence without somebody being displaced from their “ancestral lands”.

“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.“
====================================

Being your neighbour to the North,I do hope that there
are more than two rifles behind every blade of grass,and
I would sleep better,if a cannon was also behind every weed,
no grass,not pot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For all the grief Ice-T is getting over “Cop Killer”, people need to think a little bit about the story from his perspecitve. In LA, police in armored cars were ramming down doors. The LA police department had a lot of issues, and a young black man had a lot to worry about if the cops showed up, whether or not he was a drug dealer or gang member.

Secondly, if you ever try to tell me that the United States government could never be capable of nefarious acts of deceit or violence, just because ‘this is America’ and we’re in ‘modern times’ and ‘that could never happen’ or whatever lame reasoning you can think up for not possessing the means to fight tyranny — I will literally laugh in your face.

Google Randy Weaver and then WACO if you think your goberment won’t kill American citizens and the video drone killer, card shark Barrack Hussein Obama took it to another level when he killed an American citizen with a million dollar drone fired missile.

ConcealedKerry on July 23, 2012 at 5:42 PM

Working for al-Qaeda and being guilty of a firearms violation are two very different things.

“The right to bear arms is because that’s the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It’s to protect yourself from the police.”

I hate to be picky, but, his idea of tyranny seeems a bit simplistic. Occupational hazard?

a capella on July 23, 2012 at 5:39 PM

Not really, in this case Ice-T probably understands the real threat facing America better than most. If the liberals ever manage to completely take over the US like they plan, it will be the Police who come for your guns, freedom and liberty, not the military.

Tracy is absolutely correct. And lest anyone forget, Police Officers are agents of the Government. Where Tracy gets it wrong, is they are almost always State, County or Municipal Government Agents, not Federal agents. But hey, he’s from the street, so to him…That’s Government.

And yes, the ‘Stolen Land’ comment is a little uncomfortable for some..but compare and contrast ‘stolen’ from ‘conquered’ and see if that makes you feel better.

Not really, in this case Ice-T probably understands the real threat facing America better than most. If the liberals ever manage to completely take over the US like they plan, it will be the Police who come for your guns, freedom and liberty, not the military.

Secondly, if you ever try to tell me that the United States government could never be capable of nefarious acts of deceit or violence, just because ‘this is America’ and we’re in ‘modern times’ and ‘that could never happen’ or whatever lame reasoning you can think up for not possessing the means to fight tyranny — I will literally laugh in your face. Those are the notions of a spoiled, passive ignoramus who can’t be roused to the reality that liberty requires constant vigilance.

Good luck with your small guns standing up to a $600 billion a year giant, which can take on all armies of the world combined. That argument worked back when well regulated armed militia was put on paper. The ship has long sailed.

Not that I think our armed forces would turn on our own people. There’s no indication of it today, not even a signal of a trend, not even isolated incidents. Unless you’re Alex Jones.

“The right to bear arms is because… It’s to protect yourself from the police.”

Tracy Marrow [aka: Ice-T] spent the first 15-years of his adult life hustling, gang banging, dope dealing, and pumping out powerful gangsta rap songs about tricks, ho’s, slinging dope, and killing cops and white people. For the last 20 years he’s been playing a cop on TV and in the movies — and his wife is white. In fact, all of his women have been white ever since he ‘hit the big time’ and got ‘famous’.

Ice-T’s a hardcore racist [except when it comes to his women folk and their physical wiles charms] and most certainly a limousine liberal.

But above all — he remembers his roots. Guns are for killing cops.

By all rights the sociopathic vermin known as Ice-T should be dead or in prison — and his opinion on gun control is about as meaningful as Barack Hussein Obama’s opinion on business owners.

Not really, in this case Ice-T probably understands the real threat facing America better than most. If the liberals ever manage to completely take over the US like they plan, it will be the Police who come for your guns, freedom and liberty, not the military.

But I thought Officer Terry died because the US let Mexican cartels buy guns.

red_herring on July 23, 2012 at 5:27 PM

You really aren’t that bright, are you?

Border Agent Terry died because the US government furnished Mexican drug cartels with weapons and did not even bother tracking them. The US government did this so that they could put more restrictions on US gun owners in the name of public safety. This nutjob in Colorado was a godsend in the way they can rev up the rush to curtail private ownership of weapons to protect moviegoers or something.

When Ice-T mentioned ‘stolen lands’, I thought in terms of government abolishing private property rights like was done in the Soviet Union c1919, and later in Rhodesia where whites who owned their land for generations were forcibly removed by thugs after the government was toppled.

I can’t say for certain his meaning but that’s the way I was thinking. I guess I’m too Conservative. ;)

Good luck with your small guns standing up to a $600 billion a year giant, which can take on all armies of the world combined. That argument worked back when well regulated armed militia was put on paper. The ship has long sailed.

lester on July 23, 2012 at 5:50 PM

That isn’t the experience the Soviets had in Afghanistan, nor the American one in Afghanistan today.

In 1964 a small group of African American men in Jonesboro, Louisiana, defied the nonviolence policy of the mainstream civil rights movement and formed an armed self-defense organization–the Deacons for Defense and Justice–to protect movement workers from vigilante and police violence. With their largest and most famous chapter at the center of a bloody campaign in the Ku Klux Klan stronghold of Bogalusa, Louisiana, the Deacons became a popular symbol of the growing frustration with Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent strategy and a rallying point for a militant working-class movement in the South.

Local police are not under any obligation to obey the feds, and the local people (that don’t have their heads planted in their butts) know this. If the local and state cops start taking orders from the feds to suppress the citizenry, then it’s ON.

To street types, any authority figure is a potential enemy when tyranny starts to break. Cops worth a damn know this and act accordingly. To suburbanites, it depends. Liberals will hide in a hole and hope they take the neighbors first. Conservatives will stick together and defend themselves.

History should make things pretty clear really. Socialists, liberals, cowards, etc die in ovens. Conservatives die in hails of bullets. This is why liberals want to snatch guns, because they know damn well those with courage aren’t liberals, socialists, and/or progressives.

Anyway….if guns were totally illegalized for any purpose in this country, the flow of guns across the border would suddenly reverse. Watch the border get protected THEN.

For all the grief Ice-T is getting over “Cop Killer”, people need to think a little bit about the story from his perspecitve. In LA, police in armored cars were ramming down doors. The LA police department had a lot of issues, and a young black man had a lot to worry about if the cops showed up, whether or not he was a drug dealer or gang member.

hawksruleva on July 23, 2012 at 5:46 PM

Yeah, about that…. Maybe it’s been a while since you acquainted yourself with the lyrics to that piece of hog excrement:

In no other country, at no other time, has such a right existed. It is not the right to hunt. It is not the right to shoot at soda cans in an empty field. It is not even the right to shoot at a home invader in the middle of the night.

It is the right of revolution.

Let me say that again: It is the right of revolution.

Consider the words of that most forward thinking of Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson:

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Tyranny in government. That was Mr. Jefferson’s concern. And he spoke from experience, of course. He knew the Revolutionary War was not won with hand-painted banners or people chanting slogans. It was a long and bloody war of attrition where the colonials took on the biggest military machine in the world.

2. The above is probably exactly correct. Barry would say “Go get them guns.” and Cops would probably by and large say “Don’t think so there, Chief.” Even if Barry HAD made a new law that week.

a5minmajor on July 23, 2012 at 5:58 PM

Maybe the smaller town and rural police might say that, but certainly not the larger metro police. Look not further than the gun confiscations that occurred after hurricane Katrina if you want evidence of that.

Good luck with your small guns standing up to a $600 billion a year giant, which can take on all armies of the world combined. That argument worked back when well regulated armed militia was put on paper. The ship has long sailed.

lester on July 23, 2012 at 5:50 PM

That isn’t the experience the Soviets had in Afghanistan, nor the American one in Afghanistan today.

sharrukin on July 23, 2012 at 5:54 PM

The American “authorities” have never been good at understanding the nuances of guerrilla warfare. Someone as stupid as obama would never get it, and never understand how to fight it, thus his tyrannical nazi army would fall. Not that his nazi army would have many if any of our actual military involved in it, that would exclude the fine military minds from taking part in obama’s anti freedom gun grab binge and his shoot to kill any resistor mentality.

The liberals will lose a REAL war with conservatives, and they know it. This is why they haven’t tried it already.

Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, reserves, National Guard, veterans, Peace Officers, and Fire Fighters who will fulfill the Oath we swore, with the support of like minded citizens who take an Oath to stand with us, to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help us God. Our Oath is to the Constitution

“This statement is to clarify a statement made by ABC media. I was awakened by a call from a reporter by ABC on July 20 about 5:45 in the morning. I did not know anything about a shooting in Aurora at that time,” Holmes said in a statement this afternoon, read to the national press by attorney Lisa Damiani. “He asked if I was Arlene Holmes and if my son was James Holmes who lives in Aurora, Colorado. I answered yes, you have the right person. I was referring to myself.”

“I asked him to tell me why he was calling and he told me about a shooting in Aurora,” she continues. “He asked for a comment. I told him I could not comment because I did not know if the person he was talking about was my son, and I would need to find out.”

In the first paragraph of its initial report on Friday, ABC News reported that it had identified the correct James Holmes because his mother “told ABC News her son was likely the alleged culprit, saying, ‘You have the right person.'”

If Arlene Holmes’ latest statement is true, it means that she did not tell ABC News her son was likely the alleged culprit, calling into question the reporting of a network that has already been marred by one inaccuracy.